A measurement device is a device that may provide functions for measuring one or more specific signals. It is not unusual that many signals to be measured may vary with various influential factors. For example, blood pressure of a subject may vary before or after the subject performs exercises. Taking notes of these influential factors together with the measured signals are helpful in explaining and understanding the measurement and results. Notes may also be used to record background information for using a measurement device, observations during or description of a measurement, or any other information that is related to the measurement and measurement results.
However, conventional measurement devices lack capabilities to take notes with respect to a measurement in real-time and to manipulate the notes taken, and do not provide an integrated mechanism to take the notes. In one example, medical doctors usually face problems of lacking an integrated mechanism to help them take notes when they perform diagnosis or treatment on patients using a medical device. For example, when a doctor performs ultrasonography (ultrasonic image) on a patient, the doctor captures images as he finds what he is looking for. Since conventional devices do not provide convenient ways to take notes in real-time for describing the images just captured, the doctor needs to stop taking images, and to take notes off-line. The pauses waste time of both the doctor and the patient. More importantly, the doctor might miss critical moments to capture the best images since the human body status is changing all the time. Some of the conventional devices for performing ultrasonography may have a keyboard provided, however, a doctor still needs to stop taking images for keying in the notes, or to ask someone else to take the notes for him when he is taking the images.
In an alternative example, users of healthcare devices face similar problems. They need a system to help them take notes when they use the healthcare devices to measure physical or physiological parameters, such as blood pressure, heart rate, body fat/weight, or blood sugar, etc. For example, when a user measures blood pressure using a blood pressure meter, the blood pressure level may change with various physical or environmental conditions, such as blood pressure of the user may vary if the user is very hungry, or right after the user does exercises, etc. However, conventional blood pressure measurement devices may not have capabilities to take notes of measurement conditions and store the notes together with the measured blood pressure values. The notes, if available, will be significantly helpful for doctors in providing diagnosis or treatment of hypertension and other heart related diseases.
In another example, a fitness trainer may have needs of taking notes when designing a fitness training program on a fitness apparatus that fits a fitness trainee most appropriately. The trainee may perform exercises on the fitness apparatus according to the designed fitness training program. For design of the fitness training program, the trainer may not only need to have knowledge of health conditions and requirements of the trainee, but also need to know how the fitness training program works on the trainee. Conventional fitness apparatuses may perform some measurement and calculations, and record workouts such as speed, time, calorie consumed, etc. during the exercise, which may be used by the trainer in the design of the fitness training program. Other information, however, such as the trainees' feeling, observations, or the trainee's posture during the exercise may not be measured or recorded. This information may be recorded by way of taking notes during the exercise. But, a trainer may not be with each trainee all the time taking notes. Some fitness training center may use separated instruments to record the information.
Other measurement devices may also have a need of a real-time note taking mechanism. For example, an oscilloscope may be used for measuring electronic signals to understand the signal waveforms for signal quality. Hardware engineers often use oscilloscopes to troubleshoot circuit boards. If a complex circuit board has a problem, an engineer sometimes needs to measure, record, and compares signals measured from many places of the circuit board in order to diagnosis the problem. With the number of signals measured increasing, a flexible and real-time note-taking mechanism will be very helpful for the engineer to replay, review, and compare a large number of signals to identify the problem.
Therefore, there is a need for a system that provides an integrated mechanism for providing notes in real-time with respect to measurements of a measurement device. There is also a need for a system that provides capabilities to manipulate notes provided with respect to measurements of a measurement device.